DATING OUR PREHISTORIC PUEBLO RUINS' 



By NEIL M. JUDD, 

 Curator, Diz'isioii of Aiiierica)i Archeology, U. S. National Museum 



For the first time, Indian villages lying within the present United 

 States and abandoned prior to 1492 have been dated, definitely and 

 absolutely. No other recent contri])ution to American archeology 

 offers such far-reaching possibilities as this ; none other has been so 

 long awaited by students of prehistory. And the methods by which 

 those ruined villages have finally been dated with reference to our 

 own calendar smack somewhat of Sherlock Holmes, his inseparable 

 pipe and reading glass. Archeologists must, perforce, be detectives as 

 they follow l:)ack along the cold trails of primitive man's advance. 



In the present instance, however, the real contribution was made 

 not l)y an archeologist but Ivy an astronomer whose knowledge and 

 infinite patience were commandeered for the purpose by archeologists. 

 Dr. A. E. Douglass, Director of Steward C )bservatory. University of 

 Arizona, is the astronomer in cjuestion ; annual growth rings in 

 Arizona pines comprise the text in which he reads l)oth the age of two 

 score Indian towns long since deserted and the variations of climate 

 for over 1200 years. Through the researches of Doctor Douglass our 

 calendar, at least for the southwestern United States, has been ex- 

 tended to A. D. 700. 



The history of the New World, as popularly conceived in this 

 country, begins with the voyages of Columbus ; all that transpired be- 

 fore is prehistoric. To be sure, Icelandic sagas tell of discoveries by 

 Eric the Red and Thorfinn Karlsefni when the eleventh century was 

 still in its cradle, but these pioneer journeyings to the bleak Labrador 

 coast seem to many insufficiently supported l)y documentary proof. 

 Hence our common tendency to credit Columbus with having laid the 

 foundations on which the written history of the western hemisphere 

 has since been piled. 



Now the archeologist, as a retriever and interpreter of dead civi- 

 lizations, is vitally concerned with the age of the people he studies. 

 He seeks always to draw them out of the opaque past and make them 

 part of that better illuminated story which traces the recorded achieve- 

 ments of mankind. Rarely, however, does the archeologist find in his 



^Excepting that of Betatakin, all photographs are reproduced by courtesy of 

 the National Geographic Society. 



167 



